THE SEED TO SALE PROCESS
An Overview of the Full CO2 and Ethanol Extraction Process, Seed to Sale
Plant & Flower Trim
Learn best practices for utilizing your valuable plant flowers or trimmings to extract crude oil or distillate. Dry and ground trimmings or flowers from hemp make great feedstock for CO2 and ethanol extraction.
Extraction
Cryogenic ethanol extraction is a botanical extraction methodology that uses -80C Ethanol to strip the plant matter of its cannabinoids. Ethanol is frequently referred to as a universal solvent; as it extracts both hydrophobic and hydrophilic compounds. This assists in extracting the beneficial properties of the whole plant. Downstream filtration rids the ethanol-laden crude of the undesirables. We offer consulting on C02 extraction equipment and services.
Winterization and Filtration
Winterizing and filtering crude CBD oil removes waxes, fats, and lipids. This can be accomplished inline with the extractor or in post processing with additional filtration media.
Solvent Recovery
Rotary evaporators and falling film evaporators are used to distill off ethanol and water, leaving crude oil ready to be distilled. Rotovaps typically include a chiller and vacuum pump to make it a complete working system out of the box. Falling Film Evaporation is a high throughput evaporation technology that allows for much greater rates of ethanol recovery than rotary evaporation. This process is best suited for someone looking to increase their recovery rate to 30 gallons per hour or more.
Decarboxylation
For edibles, tinctures, capsules, balms, and lotions it is beneficial to decarboxylate the oil or plant material in the extraction process to activate the acid form of the cannabinoid into the neutral form. Decarboxylation can be accomplished by vacuum ovens for plant material or decarboxylation reactors for crude CBD oil. It is important to fully decarboxylate the crude cbd oil prior to pushing it into the molecular distillation step of creating cbd distillate.
Wiped Film Distillation
Short path wiped film evaporation is used to separate the terpenes from the crude oil prior to distilling the crude oil into a more pure product.
Chromatography
Used for separation and mitigation of specific cannabinoids, these systems are complex and able to strip the THC out of CBD-based products without any dangerous co-solvents.
In-House Testing
We can set you up to test cannabinoid potency at every step of the process in house. Learn to test the plant matter prior to extraction, crude oil pre and post decarboxylation, distillate after each distillation pass, and distillate after remediating the THC. We can consult with you on comparing your
in house COA (certificate of analysis) with third-party labs to ensure accuracy. We can also teach you to provide 11-Cannabinoid Panel testing for clients with a typical turn around time of 24 hours or less.
*We can connect you with some of the most respected accredited facilities in the industry.*